


Still Here

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Kamisama Hajimemashita | Kamisama Kiss
Genre: (and so do I ahahaha), F/M, Feelings, Fluff, Gen, Mizuki has a lot of feelings, Scene Analysis, coming home, manga ending spoilers, takes place during (and a little after) the epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 18:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14243574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: The day Nanami Momozono finally came home to their shrine started much the same as any other for Mizuki.





	Still Here

**Author's Note:**

> Hello~ Thank you for clicking on this fic!! I just… Ahhhh, I’ve thought a lot about Mizuki during the manga ending/after Nanami leaves the shrine, and… Idk. This happened, ahaha. I hope you have fun with it, if you read~ And also, I hope you have a great day!!

The day Nanami Momozono finally came home to their shrine started much the same as any other for Mizuki.  He hadn’t expected a thing, anyway; his hair was still windblown from weeding the shrine’s gardens, and he knew Nanami would be able to smell the sake on him as soon as she got close.  That infamous fox Tomoe - now human and fleeting and trusted more completely than he’d ever expected to be - would probably say something snide, but that was alright.

It had been a quiet day, with few visitors.  Mizuki had woken up stiff and cold, bundled under a couple layers of blankets.  The TV was still on, since he sometimes liked falling asleep to the excited buzz of human voices, lately.  Mikage and the shrine spirits were around, of course, but otherwise the world got so, so still.  It was nothing compared to the drowned Yonomori Shrine’s stillness, where Mizuki had held the whole world suspended and waiting so not even the flowers could fall…  But he remembered louder, laughing times, too, where he’d fallen asleep listening to Nanami and Tomoe bickering.  Times like that were hard to forget.

Nanami.   _Nanami_  was what really lingered with Mizuki, following him like his own slithering skin, like the warmest kind of shadow.  He saw her everywhere – during his yearly visits to Unari beneath the sea, and when he went down into town for ice cream or something.  All around the shrine, too, in school papers she’d forgotten to throw out, in a pair of rainboots with a strap broken that she’d left by the door.  Mizuki got restless, sometimes, squirming and itchy like he was ready to shed his skin.  Then he wandered a little and remembered Nanami everywhere.  She had saved him when he’d explored too close to her school, for instance.  That was when he’d decided she was too kind, too warm to lose.   

When Mikage told him Nanami was coming, Mizuki had dropped what he was reading in the grass and just hurled himself down the walkway to see her.  The pages might’ve gotten crumpled or smeary with dew, but that was alright, too.  Nanami, that goddess that had pried him up out of his scheming, bitter new self and  _wanted_  him, even if it wasn’t in the same way as she’d wanted Tomoe…  Mizuki would have been lying if he said the book mattered to him much at all right then, whatever it was.  He half-heard Mikage snickering behind him, but he was running before he completely processed that he wanted to run.   

“The shrine’s going to be so alive now, Mizuki,” Mikage had said, holding a fan out to shade his Shinshi’s face as Mizuki leaned back to look at him.  “And look – she’s even old enough to try your sacred sake with you, now.”

“Nanami?  You mean  _Nanami_ , Lord Mikage?” 

Who else could he mean?  Who else was Mizuki still waiting for?  But he had to be so, so sure.

“She  _did_  say she’d come back to us, someday.”

And then he was off.  Maybe Mikage was drawling something about how much money they’d save on the power bill, now that Mizuki would be keeping the TV off at night…  Maybe he stubbed his toes along the rocky path down into the forest proper.  But Mizuki barely felt a thing.  Mikage followed along after him a little slower, swinging his arms at his sides and leaning back to feel the sun on his face.

Somewhere down the road, Nanami was stepping back into their lives, climbing up to their shrine.  Somewhere so, so close.     

Mizuki still had all the letters she’d sent him since she’d married and gone off to the city.  Well, sent to the  _shrine_ , honestly, but he kept them folded up in a box with icy mother-of-pearl worked into the top, tucked away with pressed flowers from the sunken Yonomori Shrine and the rest of his clothes. Mikage hadn’t seemed to mind.  

There were pictures tucked in with those letters, too.  Some from a day Nanami, Tomoe and a few of their friends spent at an amusement park, some with Nanami posing dramatically in front of the preschool that first hired her.  There were “Before” and “After” shots of their chosen apartment, unfurnished and then full of warmth. 

Maybe Mizuki thought about those letters as he ran the first bit down from the shrine, to the place where Mikage’s domain brushed up against the mortal world.  Or maybe he just thought about how his home had been before Nanami left.  Reading her romance novels and discussing favorite characters’ relationships with her — taunting Tomoe into those silly rages of his and watching their shared goddess roll her eyes.  All that homey stuff that had let Mizuki be the kind of person he’d been before Yonomori Shrine was flooded.  The kind of person he actually wanted to be.   

Or maybe he didn’t think about anything at all.  No matter what, Mizuki froze for just a moment, when he actually saw his goddess.  His goddess that wasn’t a goddess anymore – his goddess that was warm blood and gentle hands and everything about humanity his first, perfect Lady Yonomori had taught him to protect.  He ducked away and watched Nanami coming nearer, his long, cold hands shaking and the grass scratching against his legs.

Maybe Mizuki just didn’t know what to say, yet.  Maybe he couldn’t believe his eyes, staring out like it was the first time he’d ever seen a sunrise.  Who would Nanami be, now?  What had changed, while they were in their different worlds?  As a snake Shinshi, as a goddess’s vision, Mizuki was eternal.  He was ethereal, twining ribbons of water held spinning over a lake – he was protection, and he was reverence.  He wouldn’t be able to change so quickly as a human could.  It was awful, awful feeling left behind.

But Mizuki hadn’t been left behind at all.  Not yet.

Nanami was crying a little, looking honest and safe and just so like her old self – Nanami was announcing, “I’m home,” in a voice completely like Mizuki hoped it would be.  He had dreamt about that voice so many times, it was a relief to see he’d remembered it correctly.

That was enough.  He couldn’t keep hiding bent up behind something and away from her, not then.  Not now that she  _was_  truly home and so close he could see the slight freckles along her cheeks. 

Mizuki was crying too, by that point.  The world blurred like running ink – the trees became a smear of sunlight and movement, Tomoe a looming, smirking human smudge with predictably flashy taste in clothes.  Nanami passed her baby over to her husband, and the fox that wasn’t a fox anymore folded his arms so tenderly around that child.  No one would have ever thought he used to burn armies into pools of boiling steel, even, Mizuki didn’t think.

Nanami had her own arms open and ready to fold Mizuki close, when he got to her.  He said “Welcome Home” as eloquently as he could, right about then, and she told him she’d missed him; she rubbed his back, gently, and scolded him about the knots he’d let form there.  Nanami was so much older, yes, but she was also just the same.  Her shampoo still smelled like chemical flowers; her eyes were still the same deep, cozy brown as crackling firewood.  Mizuki told her so, and she laughed, shaking him a little without letting go.

“I know you mean that as a compliment, so I’m going to let the ‘you seem so much older’ thing slide,” Nanami told him.  She pulled back a little to look him up and down – her kimono was intricate and new.  Mizuki knew it was the sort of thing she’d only buy for a happy day.  He would have dressed up, too, if he’d known. 

“I should look about the same,” Mizuki said, suddenly a little quiet and sing-song under the weight of her eyes.  He couldn’t age the way Nanami did, even if he wanted to.  And maybe in that moment, he _did_ want to.  Sort of.  “I hope that’s a good thing, too.  Um.  In its way?”

“You do,” Nanami assured him.  “And  _of course_  it is.  Who do you think we were coming home to see?”  Here, she waved over Mizuki’s shoulder at Mikage and the shrine spirits, but she didn’t pull away.  Some of her fingers were still scrunched up in his sleeves, and he let her words echo in his head for just a second – who else would she come home to see?  That had always been the way it was with Nanami, right?  He was fine the way he was.

“ _We are so lucky to have you back_ ,” Mizuki said.  He used his very sweetest voice, but it didn’t feel like enough.  When he kissed her forehead, he could feel Tomoe’s eyes like steaming brands against his skin.  Mikage laughed from somewhere behind him, calling the once-fox over so he could meet Nanami’s child. 

They all knew the way things were.  This was love, but Mizuki wasn’t the one Nanami’d chosen for romantic dates, chosen to give her a child.  Theirs was the kind of love that meant they could drink tea together and watch whatever new shows Nanami was into.  It meant they could go into town sometimes and stock up on snack foods together.  And of course,  _of course_  that was better than nothing.  Mizuki brushed his sleeve against his eyes, blinking them clear. 

“If you’re done, Lord Mikage says we can bring our bags inside, now,” Tomoe announced from somewhere behind Mizuki, voice nice and dry.  “Hello to you, too, Snake.  By the way.  Very polite, how you completely ignored me.”

“Oh, hi, Fox,” Mizuki answered, brushing at the air with a still-shaking hand.  He rested just a little of his weight against Nanami as he turned around, but she didn’t seem to mind.  It was weird knowing how raw and unguarded his smile probably was, just then.  He’d missed this.  He’d missed Tomoe, as crazy as  _that_  was.  “I’ll help bring up Nanami and the baby’s bags, but we’ll just have to see about yours.”

“Oh, and it begins again, huh?” Nanami said, shaking her head.  That expression, right there – Mizuki knew that face almost better than he knew his own, and he’d been around so many more decades than Nanami could possibly live.

Nanami introduced Mizuki to her new child, and he shook one of those tiny hands like he’d seen humans do on television.  She chatted with Mikage in an easy, playful way Mizuki still hadn’t quite mastered.   She stomped down a little jokey fight about whether Tomoe was expected to cook everyone a huge, fancy meal like he had back in the old days. 

Something Mizuki hadn’t realized was coiled up tight deep, deep in his chest was coming undone.  Walking the familiar path back up to Mikage Shrine, just then, felt like the sky clearing.  


End file.
